Today I have uploaded pictures from Antigua. You find all of our pictures here; http://picasaweb.google.se/SailingCantare

Yesterday we heared a rumour about us being in this month's Practical Boat Owner, but we haven't seen it ourselves yet. Check it out if you can and want. /The Captain

We’ve had a lovely time here in Antigua and a lot of things have happened since we arrived. Cecilia has left the boat after having spent almost a month on the boat. We’ve met three new Norwegian boats with crew in our age, two of them we didn’t even know existed. Ariana was here for 10 days before she had to fly back home yesterday. We have celebrated Sofia’s 25th birthday together with Norwegian friends down in English Harbour. Ariana and I took a short minivacation from the ordinary sail life and went to Green Island where we discovered an interesting wreck. Back here in Jolly Harbour we have made our 5th and 6th dive together with Ariana, that was great fun. Not so much because of what we saw but more because it felt so good. Although it feels like it was years ago that we left Tobago we hadn’t forgotten how to do it and we were even better than before. Sofia didn’t use her air that quick and I was able to stay down for 50 minutes, the longest ever. Ariana took her Open Water in Sweden so for her it was the first time in warm water with visibility greater than 1 meter, she was very happy afterwards. My sister, Catrine, has now joined us and will be a part of the crew until we reach the Azores. I guess our parents will be a bit worried with their two daughters on the Atlantic, but I feel very pleased and happy to have Catrine with me. I also hope that she will be able to help me sort out what to do when I return to Sweden. At the moment I don’t really know, maybe study (but what?) or maybe work (if I find a job). I will at least try to write a book about this adventure but I guess my grandma won’t be satisfied unless I start doing something ”real” aswell. Anyway, Catrine joined us Monday evening, bringing with her a present from her employer Pyramid, drink money for the crew on Cantare! Perfect,we all loved that and on Ariana’s last night we went out and had some pink drinks celebrating her stay her and Catrine’s arrival. The only downside with this is that it is time to leave Antigua today, and with that I feel that the beginning of our return has come. I know that there is a lot more for us to do here before we start our Atlantic crossing, but we have come to the next phase of our stay in the West Indies. We will now head slowly to Cuba via St. Barths, St. Martin, British Virgin Islands and Turks and Caicos. With that we will soon leave the yachtcrowded harbours for more adventures destination, but also destination without chandleries and supermarkets. Time to make Cantare ready for another Atlantic crossing. But first, of course, we will try to forget everything about that with some more rum drinks and the prospect of visiting Cuba! /The Captain

My journey to Cantare began with 24 hours delay, but then, very excited and exhausted, I finally reached the restaurant Hemingways in St Johns where the rendez vous with the Cantare crew was set. After many hugs, some gossip, other short updates and a couple of Caribs we were ready to go to Redcliff Quay where Cantare was waiting for us. Two neighbouring boats then joined us with Rum and Coca Cola and then a visit to a Night Club where we danced all night long with the locals.

The next day we had a short sailing to Jolly Harbour. The scenery was astonishing and I had to convince my self that what I saw was for real and that I was finally sailing on Cantare in the Caribbean. When we arrived to Jolly Harbour we found out that this is a very well organized marina with a nice supermarket, sports club, etc etc. So the girls were now very happy not only for having a working fridge, but for being able to fill it with nice and fresh food from the supermarket. Me and Cecilia took also the opportunity to play some tennis in the heat. The next two days were all about just hanging out and then sadly saying good bye to Cecilia.

After celebrating Sofia’s birthday in English harbour, that you can see pictures from, me and Maria decided to have a short sailing to Green island. We had heard that the island is very nice and calm. We took off and after only two hours we had reached the island. The first thing we spotted was an abandoned ship that was up on a reef. We decided that we would go closer to the yacht with our dinghy after anchoring Cantare. After some snorkelling and swimming we had a quick look at the wreck from our dinghy. Unfortunately we couldn’t see from which country the ship was, but we suspected that it was recently abandoned but that some equipment was missing. The rest of the night we were discussing different scenarios on the background of the ship, how it ended up on that reef and how it was abandoned. These discussions were accompanied with a nice Cantare cooked dinner and some Spanish sangria.

We decided to spend the following morning at the close by beach. It was beautiful there, looked like a post card. White sand, turquoise water and Cantare in the bay, with two other sail boats. Me and Maria agreed, this was paradise!

In the afternoon we came back to English Harbour, were we picked up Sofia at Odin. She had been baby sitting and spending her time there while me and Maria were away. Then we had some nice drinks with our friends from El Mar, Havfrilla, Odin and Safari at Safari, before we all took off with our dinghies to the beach. The plan was to walk to Shirley heights where they arrange live music and barbeque every Sunday. This walk was not that easy to do since there were different paths to choose between, and they all ended up in a field of cactuses. So the group was shortly split into three smaller groups. I don’t know exactly how the others managed to arrive to Shirley heights by foot, but me and the group I ended up with had a drive with the owner of the restaurant where we had celebrated Sofia’s birthday. Since we had children with us we decided they would sit inside the car and the rest of us had a nice view of the sun set from the back of the pick up.

Now I only have two days left in paradise and I must say that the time here has been absolutely fantastic. I can’t stop being breathlessly impressed by all these long sailors. Boats with children on board, solo sailors, Maria and her Cantare crew. What they are doing is expressing that nothing is impossible. It only takes lot of planning (all though I have also met sailors with very limited preparations), hard work and commitment to do a journey like this to paradise. /Deckhand Ariana